Rancher Held Onto Land But Landed In Prison -- Marijuana Apparently Was Cash Crop

ODESSA, Lincoln County - Folks in Lincoln County knew Bud King as a man who took risks trying to hang onto the family's cattle ranch.

But in an apparent attempt to get out from under heavy debt so he could leave the spread to his sons, King took one risk too many.

Yesterday, the 59-year-old grandfather and second-generation rancher began serving a five-year prison term at Geiger Corrections Center near Spokane for his role in the biggest marijuana-growing operation to come to authorities' attention in state history.

King's arrest during a Sept. 9 raid on the King Brothers Ranch stunned neighbors who knew him as a man with a big stride, a cowboy hat, a can of chewing tobacco and a kerchief hanging out of the back pocket of his jeans.

"Everybody in town was really shocked, and they're still talking about it," said Denny McDaniel, mayor in this community of about 1,000 people. "That kind of thing just doesn't happen here."

Agents seized 6,000 mature marijuana plants in the raid. The high-grade marijuana hybrid had been grown between rows of corn on the 2,000-acre ranch since 1988, prosecutors said.

After the raid, King led FBI agents to $637,000 in drug profits he had buried in metal ammunition boxes.

"It comes right down to greed, nothing else," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice.

At his sentencing hearing last month before U.S. District Judge Frem Nielsen, King said he was "damned sorry" for getting involved in the dope-growing scheme.

"If I could change it, I would," he said.

He has declined to discuss the case or his reasons for becoming involved. But friends and relatives speculate that he wanted to pay off substantial loans so he could leave the ranch to his sons, Wade and Wes King.

"That ranch was Bud's whole life," said Keith Kolterman, fertilizer manager for the Odessa Grange.

"I will say my brother is one of the harder-working people in the country," said Wally King, though they haven't spoken since a 1988 dispute over the way the ranch was being operated.

"The wounds are deep," said Wally King of their disagreement.

When their father died in 1955, Wally King said he agreed to accept annual payments of $20,000 rather than force sale of the ranch inherited jointly by the brothers.

"He wanted to keep the ranch in the family, for his boys, and I wasn't about to stop that," said King, who works as a farm-machinery repairman here.

"The way I figure it, maybe after he got in this deal, he couldn't get out. That's a pretty hard game to play," Wally King said. "I knew my brother had a lot of guts, but I also thought he had more brains."

King pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to grow and sell marijuana, and failure to pay taxes on his drug profits.

Because of liens against King's property, the federal government could not easily seek forfeiture of the ranch, Rice said. Instead, King agreed to pay $190,000 cash for his interest in the ranch, and his sons will continue to run it.

In exchange for a shorter sentence than the mandatory 10-year term, King agreed to testify against some of the eight Stevens County men - including a 71-year-old and a 67-year-old - also indicted in the conspiracy. Their trials are scheduled to start next month.

"It was a commercial operation, enough for semi-truck loads," said FBI supervisor Jeffrey John.

Harvested marijuana was hauled in pickups to cabins in the remote Kelly Hill area of Stevens County, where it was dried and packaged for shipment. Investigators still do not know where the millions of dollars of marijuana grown on the ranch over four years was distributed.